Friday, April 24, 2015

How Netflix cracked the formula for hit shows

I'm a sucker for comics. Specifically super hero comics. And, after seeing Netflix's Daredevil, I was taken by how accurate and well done it is. It's one of the best adaptations I've seen to a comic series. Fast paced, good action, just blunt and dark enough.

That got me thinking - How the hell did they do that? After "Orange is the new black" and "House of cards", Netflix seem to be churning out great TV, again and again.

The answer is simple. Netflix, which started as a mail rental service (Just because broadband infrastructure wasn't relevant back then) and moved on to online video rental, simply know exactly what we want as viewers.
They know which movies we like.
Which movies we watch until the end, and which movies we "break" in the middle.
They also know which scenes we run over and over again.

By tagging every scene in every content, they have the ability to create the perfect show for each one of their viewers. They can actually make script decisions (Exactly how the story will be built) according to data.

Furthermore - In the future, story would not be linear as we know it, but every subscriber will get his own, personal, customised version of the show. Yoni Bloch's Interlude might actually close this gap from the production end.

That's pretty amazing.